Silent Hill Downpour: DAY NINE

[sincere]

You can't outrun yourself, Murphy!


Starting from: Chase sequence in the prison!

Comments

[sincere]

Might finish this one today and then it's all Graces all the time baby.

[slayerofgod]

Screw you, dead guy! He's still gonna try!

[rainfall]

It was considerably harder to run for the last part of the game. :( Like, often impossible, because either rooms would be flooded or the floor would be unstable, and when those things happen Murphy sometimes refuses to run.

And then of course there was the finale.

[sincere]

She made it out of the chase sequence and is now exploring the Dark Silent Hill prison. This game is very dark.

[sincere]

We're on a long creepy bridge, and jail cells keep dropping out of the sky in our path.

[sincere]

Murphy has another near-drop off the bridge, and when he climbs up -- we've lost all his weapons again.

Except for the prison shank we got from the evidence at the crime scene in the shower room...

Uh-oh.

[sincere]

This area is suuuuper creepy. Uh, what is going on.

The controls are very weird and there are angry prisoner monsters trying to kill Murphy and he won't run because he's too freaked out and smart. The smartest.

[sincere]

Or maybe you're not supposed to confront them at all and there's a clever way to trap them.

[rainfall]

Okay so. There was a whole area based around "reflection", with one side being stained red and one side being kind of 90% monochrome.

In most of the rooms there was a crank I could turn to "fall" through the water onto the other side of the reflection.

Items were duplicated, so I got a First Aid kit and then a MIRROR First Aid kit. 8D

And enemies were only on the one side. :(

And there were SPINNING BLADES.

[sincere]

Things are happening! Trapping of prisoner monsters, more chase sequences...

[rainfall]

I really liked this part. It turns out that the prisoner monsters flinch back from light, so there are spotlights you can twist around to herd the monsters into enclosures and then trap them there.

This is good, because otherwise there were a total of six of them, three each time, between me and the exit to a room where I had 0 weapons and (by that point, I think) 4 first aid kits.

[sincere]

We came to a locked door with a set of scales. We put all the evidence that we gathered from the crime scene and put it onto the scales. The scale tilts to the side and then the door opens.

rainfall: That's the weight of my guilt!

[rainfall]

Well it's truuuue. No other inventory items move the scales at all. 8D

[sincere]

There's a giant, giant, giant mangled monster in a wheelchair here. It is breathing noisily through its life support and flailing angrily at Murphy. It's awesome.

[slayerofgod]

This game needs a price cut sooner rather than later. It sounds totally awesome.

[sincere]

You disconnect the life support and it flails and dies.

And now we're in the shower room with the mangled body, and the lady cop is here. "How could you? He was a good man!"

Murphy protests, no, he was a monster, but when he looks at it again, it's Officer Coleridge. Flashback to Murphy meeting Coleridge in the shower room, freaking out; this isn't what he agreed to...

[temples]

What is this game's wheelchair fetish!

ENDING COMMENTARY IN THIS COMMENT

[rainfall]

I really like how your murder of him is totally indirect. There's some fridge brilliance there with the good ending, which you achieve by trying and failing to help people and not 'finishing' monsters.

(Literally: running from monsters gets you NOTHING. Only incapacitating them and then sparing them earns you points towards the good ending.)

I'm particularly pleased because otherwise the good ending would have felt weird to me. Really? You make up for your sins by largely not having committed any to begin with...? You know? But I like the fridge brilliance aspect of it.

[sincere]

The lady cop says, "My father was a great man."

He didn't die right away; he spent years in a wheelchair after what Murphy did to him. Mangled and helpless and dying.

"Every time I looked at him, I saw a monster. I saw you."

And now Murphy is Gas Mask Guy.

[temples]

Oh. That's why this game loves wheelchairs.




I assumed Murphy killed a wheelchair's family.

[sincere]

NOW MURPHY GETS TO CHASE HER DOWN AS THE GAS MASK GUY WHILE SHE RUNS AND SHOOTS AT HIM

OH BOY

[slayerofgod]

O_O

[sincere]

The lady cop is named Anne Marie Cunningham. Somehow I made it through the whole game without knowing that.

[rainfall]

I have a feeling it was very deliberate. Her character sketch in the back of the book says "Cop B" on it. (As opposed to Sewell and Coleridge and DJ Ricks, who all have names.)

[sincere]

Reloading to get another ending! This time rainfall gets in a good hit on her and she goes down, because... sledgehammer.

MORAL CHOICE: SPARE HER, OR KILL HER?

[temples]

Kill the crap out of her!

Spoiler: Contains info on how to get the endings

[rainfall]

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Killing or sparing Anne Marie is a major choice, similar to killing or exorcising Alessa in SH1. If you kill her, you get one of the Bad endings. If you spare her, you get one of the Good endings.

The "+" portion of our ending is then determined by the rest of our actions in the game, or as the guide puts it our "secret score". Sparing incapacitated enemies (but NOT RUNNING FROM THEM) gets you points; murdering enemies loses you points. Other things that gain or lose you points:

+ Trying to save Anne Marie at the ravine
- Leaving her to die
+ Trying to console JP at the Devil's Pit
- Taunting him

So, we got the good ending "Forgiveness" and the bad ending "Full Circle"; the endings we couldn't get because I made too many other + decisions are "Truth & Justice" (Good) and "Execution" (Bad).

For what it's worth, I don't think I got an achievement for our Special ending, "Reversal". :|a But maybe I missed it.

Ending Achievements: Ending A, Ending C.

STATS

[rainfall]

Achievements

Ending A
Ending C

Fight or Flight? (Escaped from 20 monsters)
Stay of Execution (Incapacitated 20 monsters without killing them)
The Bigger They Are... (Killed/incapacitated 10 Prisoner Juggernauts)
Lockdown (Killed/incapacitated 10 Prisoner Minions)
Shadow Boxer (Killed/incapacitated 10 Dolls)
Silence is Golden (Killed/incapacitated 10 Screamers)

Hypochondriac (Used 20 First Aid Kits)

No Turning Back (Reached Overlook Penitentiary)
Broken Cycle (Defeated the Bogeyman) (I got this achievement at the end of St. Maria's, I think)
Ashes, Ashes (Collected 3 pages of the rhyme book)
Whatever Doesn't Kill You... (Escaped the Radio Station Otherworld)
Found a Friend! (Met DJ Ricks in the Radio Station)
Going Off the Rails (Escaped from the Devil's Pit)
Out of the Frying Pan (Rode the Sky Tram to Devil's Pit)
Now You're Cooking... (Survived the Diner Otherworld)

Spot the Difference (Completed the "Mirror, Mirror" side quest)
Dust to Dust (Completed the "Ashes to Ashes" side quest)
Neighborhood Watch (Completed the "Stolen Goods" side quest)
Calling All Cars (Completed the "All Points Bulletin" side quest)

For the record, there are 41 achievements and I only unlocked 21. :D There are 9 more side quests in the game in addition to the 4 I actually finished. /cry

I did not get the Good Behavior achievement for not killing any monsters, and the very idea of trying makes me cry a little inside. The "Juggernaut" type of Prisoner monsters get RIGHT BACK UP after you knock them down; there's literally a pause of like, ten seconds.

And apparently there IS an achievement for the other secret ending, which makes the one we got ALL THE MORE SECRET aw yeah.